by Kim Fay
“But we didn’t go out there to kill him,” Irene insisted. “We didn’t plan on it. You said so yourself.”
As the sun thawed the last smoky strands of fog, baring deep blue bruises of open sea, Simone said, “Be honest with yourself. It was in your heart too.”
The first half of the voyage from Shanghai to Saigon passed with agonizing slowness. Each day Irene sat on a canvas lounge chair gazing out at the distant fringe of the Chinese shore, while Simone strolled idly around the deck, dragging the back of one hand along the railing as she passed beneath the balconies of the first-class staterooms on the level above. Overhead the twin stacks released tufts of smoke that wavered like low-lying clouds before evaporating in the cool air. With the smoke came the smudged odor of burning coal, its residue mingling in the dry white skim of salt that Irene washed from her face every night before bed.
Simone wore floral dresses with modest scalloped collars, a style similar to those common among the other young female passengers. This conformity was an obvious attempt to blend in, and it disappointed Irene, for she had enjoyed that particular eccentricity of Simone’s. But she understood the necessity. In this floating bulwark of one-dimensional provinciality, Simone did not need help standing out. Everyone knew who she was and whom she was married to. To the financiers and military officers aboard the Lumière, a man like Roger Merlin was a natural enemy. To their wives, because marriage in the tropics is about loyalty—not to husbands but to an idea of civilization, often at risk of collapse from dengue fever or incompetent servants, let alone political upheaval—Roger was contemptible. As his wife, Simone was a blatant reminder of the threat to their colonial privileges and the status they could never achieve or afford in their homelands.
Only one passenger on the steamer showed any courtesy to Simone. Eduard Boisselier was the man Anne had guessed would be watching them. Approaching their table during lunch the second day out, he bowed with the courtliness of an earlier era before addressing Simone. “Bonjour, madame. Pardon this interruption, but I would like to introduce myself.” He went on to praise an editorial that Simone had written in the Shanghai Chronicle about the frailties of the Comintern. “You have some clever ideas about new directions for the party,” he said. “And quite unusual, considering what the paper usually publishes.” He then asked if he might have the honor of strolling around the deck with her that afternoon.
In spite of knowing that he might be some kind of informant, Irene liked the way this elderly Frenchman flattered Simone. He made her laugh, and as the days dragged on, he gave her something to think about other than Roger. Simone had been born in Cambodia and Monsieur Boisselier in Senegal, but Irene overheard them comparing stories about France, conversing in the homesick patois common to those who lived in the colonies. Still, they had to be careful; Simone could become too friendly with him and, without meaning to, give something away about their plans or Roger’s death. One morning before breakfast, Irene pulled her aside. “You should know, Anne thinks he’s been sent to watch us,” she warned.
Curtly, Simone replied, “Me. He’s been sent to watch me. Did you think I wasn’t aware of it?”
Simone’s hostility was not unexpected. After their conversation that first morning on the steamer, a new tension had grown between the two women as they grappled with the fact that they valued the temple over a man’s life. This would take some getting used to, this unrepentant truth—the kind of truth one should not admit even to one’s self, let alone share with another.
So while Simone and Monsieur Boisselier walked round the deck, Irene waited for the images of Roger’s death to fade, in the same way the bungalow had receded in the rearview mirror as they drove away from the body stiffening in the grass. She could feel the possibility of going stir-crazy, stuck with her anxious thoughts as she waited out the days on the snail-paced steamer, and she sought the peace she’d felt while sailing with her father, doing her best to give her attention over to the sea. To the horizon, stable between water and sky. To the appliqué of whitecaps pleating the surface, luring the mind toward the calm depths below.
Then, gradually, as the mornings passed into afternoons, punctuated by the steady perambulation of Simone and Monsieur Boisselier, a routine that could have become plodding steadily took on significance. Each orbit made by Simone and her escort, although no different from the one that had preceded it, marked the voyage, taking Irene farther, and then farther still, from the vise grip of what had happened in Shanghai.
On the morning that the steamer was berthed in Hong Kong, Irene woke within the tide of a dream—of discovering a temple’s fallen pillar in the scrub of a forest floor. As she sat up in bed, the feel of rough stone lingered on her fingers, and she thought about how, in a matter of hours, they would leave this harbor, and when they did, they would be closer to Saigon than to Shanghai. Saigon, the capital of Indochina and the gateway to Phnom Penh. This fact buoyed her, and perhaps it had infected Simone too. She was in good spirits as they sat down to breakfast, talking about looking up her old family servant Touit when they arrived in Cambodia. Touit, who had been as much of a mother to her as the woman she called “ma chère maman” had been.
It was the first time Irene had heard Simone speak of Cambodia in such a lighthearted way. As she pushed her crepe around her plate, she told Irene how Touit would chase her through the darkening ruins of the Bayon temple in order to give her a bath. “I hated coming in from playing out there. I remember one night, hiding behind the Terrace of the Elephants, listening to old Touit puffing over the stones shouting my name. I thought it was funny, but when she found me she told my mother, who gave her permission to punish me in any way she chose. She forbade me to go to the temples for a month.”
Irene twined her fingers around her coffee cup, listening to Simone as she had once listened to her mother or Mr. Simms tell her the myths of the ancient Khmer. To her, the story of a servant named Touit chasing a little French girl around the ruins was equally magical. They were interrupted by a steward making his rounds, handing out newspapers just brought aboard. Irene had no interest in weeks-old news from home, but Simone picked through The New York Times, the London Times, and Le Figaro, claimed a copy of the North-China Daily News, and continued talking. “She didn’t even allow me out for the lunar new year celebrations. I cried for so long I made myself ill.”
Simone laughed at this memory and reached for her tea. It was then that Irene noticed the European woman at the table next to them, young but grown exponentially fat, no doubt from giving birth to the five children seated around her. She was holding her own copy of the North-China Daily and staring at Simone. Irene read the headline, COMMUNIST LEADER MURDERED!, and felt the scandal careening through the breakfast tables as faces turned toward them. Simone’s downcast eyes were studying the headline on the paper beside her plate. Her face turned white as plaster. It was as if Roger’s death had not been real until it was put into words and known by others. Simone grabbed her shawl from the back of her chair, and as she rushed away, newspaper crushed in her hand, the fat woman mumbled, “It’s about time.”
Irene stood. Everyone in the room was watching. She glared down at the woman. “Disgusting Alsatian brood cow,” she snapped. She hurried after Simone, but Simone was faster and had locked herself in her cabin before Irene could reach her.
The optimistic spell cast by Irene’s dream had been broken by the announcement of Roger’s death. After pounding futilely on Simone’s door, she took a copy of the North-China Daily to the salon and, under the watchful eye of more than one passenger, read a mélange of journalistic fact, opinion, and creative speculation. Roger Merlin’s body had been found by a peasant in the countryside. He’d been stabbed in the neck, but before this happened, his arm and leg had been broken, the result of torture reminiscent of battering techniques used during the Opium Wars. There was a brief paragraph about his wife who was away. Away. That was all. This was not noted as unusual, and there was nothing accusatory in the
mention of Simone, although the journalist described her as a victim who was “one of the situation’s greatest benefactors.”
Irene learned that three minor Municipal Government employees had been taken in for questioning, and that riots were seeping into the international districts. Envisioning the turmoil, she glanced up to see a table of mustachioed colonials watching her, and she was unnerved. All that was happening in Shanghai, every truth and lie being told in this newspaper, everything these old men across the room thought they knew but didn’t, she and Simone had set it in motion.
The monsoon season was under way, and as the day progressed, a storm enveloped the Lumière. Chandeliers swung from side to side like the passengers staggering beneath them. The sea buckled and swayed, and although the worst was over by suppertime, few people came out of their cabins for dinner. The immense dining hall felt like an abandoned stage set. Only three passengers ventured to the captain’s table in the first-class section. The White Russian orchestra was given the night off because the trombonist and drummer were seasick, and the vacuum created by the absence of music gave the wooden-floored room a forlorn echo. This, combined with the lack of people, made Monsieur Boisselier all the more unavoidable when he raised his hand toward Irene standing alone in the entryway.
He rose as she approached, and when he held out a chair for her, she saw the grooves where the tines of his comb had been dragged through his thin hair, yellow-gray from a lifetime of pomades. His face was blotched with age spots, and his nose was jagged amid his otherwise refined features. He smelled overwhelmingly of camphor, perhaps used for the arthritis that visibly affected his joints, and Irene was glad when he went back to his side of his table. “How is she?” he asked.
This was the first time Irene had spoken to him alone. “Distraught, as you can imagine. She should have been told before the newspapers were delivered. It was terrible for her to be caught so unaware.”
“I must admit, Roger Merlin was a man I considered indestructible.”
Irene abhorred secrecy when she was the one being kept in the dark, and she could see no harm in letting Monsieur Boisselier know that she was aware of his purpose. “Does this change things?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Does this change what they think she might do?”
He looked bewildered, as if he were trying and failing to recall a conversation he and Irene might have had at an earlier time. “They?”
“The Communists, the Municipal Government, whoever it is that sent you to watch her.”
“Interesting,” Monsieur Boisselier murmured. He nodded to his half-eaten scallops of veal, languishing in a sauce of vermouth and cream. “Are you hungry? Shall I call the waiter?”
“No, thank you. Not yet.” Determined to guide the old man to the answers she wanted, Irene asked, “Am I right? Are you a private detective?”
He laughed. “I like Americans. Very direct. May I ask why this would matter to you?”
Dismissing his amusement, Irene said, “I’m worried.”
“Why?” he asked, as he poured her a glass of Bordeaux from the carafe beside his plate.
“My life’s work.” Taking a sip, she primed herself to practice the made-up tale she had been rehearsing since the start of her trip. “Khmer trade routes. I’m close to piecing together the major passage between Angkor Wat and Peking. I can’t do it without Simone. Without her father’s research.”
“Well, you needn’t worry about me any longer. My job is done.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My employer has been murdered.”
“Roger?”
“Now I have caught you off guard.”
Irene could hear the dominance in his tone. She felt her self-possession slipping, and she tightened her hold on her glass, as if this could provide ballast. “How could he know we’d be on this ship? He was …”
“Dead?”
“The newspaper said he’d been dead a week by the time he was found.”
“Direct, but so very innocent. You bought a ticket in her name the day after you arrived in Shanghai. Anyone could have told him. The entire city was on his payroll.”
“Including you.”
He took a swallow of wine. “I never should have agreed to half in advance and half once the job was done. I’m too old for this kind of work. But I needed that money. I have almost paid off a cottage in Dakar, right on the Atlantic. I had hoped to retire,” he said, wearily.
It alarmed Irene that when she and Simone went to Roger’s bungalow in the Chinese countryside, he had already known she’d bought passage on the Lumière. Had he told this old man about the temple? If so, Monsieur Boisselier could pass the information along to someone new for the final payment he needed. “What if I finish your contract?” Irene asked.
“How?”
“I will give you what you’re owed if you tell me why Roger wanted Simone watched.”
He shook his head at her presumption. “You don’t know what I’m owed.”
Irene’s satchels were lined with cash that Mr. Simms had given her. How dare this man not take her seriously? “It doesn’t matter. I can pay it.”
Monsieur Boisselier examined Irene. With deliberation, he said, “I can assure you of one thing. He told me nothing about Khmer trade routes.”
Irene took a sip of her wine, and then another, fighting her instinct to push him, sensing that one wrong word would shut him down.
He reached into his breast pocket for a gold case. Opening it, he offered Irene a cigarette, but she shook her head, intent on waiting him out. He set the case beside his plate, and his eyes never once left her face. Finally, he said, “He believed she was going to betray him.”
“There’s another man?”
“He did not mention a name, if that’s what you’re asking. Only once did he give a clue. He said, ‘I always knew she would betray me for her first love.’ ”
When Irene left the dining room, she took with her new concerns: Monsieur Boisselier’s possible knowledge of the temple, and now that Roger’s death had been discovered, worry about what officials might ask of Simone once they reached Saigon. Even if they did not suspect her, their investigation would cause a delay.
Irene decided that she would not tell Simone about her conversation with Monsieur Boisselier. They had not talked at all about what needed to be accomplished once they reached Saigon or what lay ahead of them in the jungle, and she needed Simone’s attention to focus on that. She would pay Monsieur Boisselier, buying his silence with the house in Dakar and then some, and when they reached Saigon, she would track down Marc Rafferty, who had said he was going there to visit his aunt on his way to Amsterdam. If he was as good at gathering information as he claimed, then he was the only one Irene knew who could help her find out what threat Monsieur Boisselier posed and if anyone else was watching Simone.
As Irene entered the corridor leading to her cabin, she saw Simone sitting on the floor outside her door. The wintry margins of the storm had pushed their way inside, and Simone wore denim trousers and a thick cable-knit sweater. The sweater’s large, loose neckline revealed a frayed camisole and her winged collarbones. Its belled sleeves hung down below her fingertips. Despite the days spent strolling in brisk sea air, she did not look healthy. Unlike Irene, whose dark blond hair was streaked with light and skin was tanned, Simone had not benefited from the sun.
“I wondered if I would see you again today.” Irene held out her hand to help Simone up. “I went to your cabin to check on you earlier. You didn’t answer.”
“I was trying to sleep.” Simone followed Irene inside and stood next to the writing table. She tapped her fingers anxiously on Pierre Loti’s A Pilgrimage to Angkor, which Irene had been rereading earlier that afternoon. Beside her, the curtain was drawn back, away from the porthole. The storm had worn itself out, and the sky had cleared of all but a lingering stream of transparent clouds. Moonlight reflected up off the plane of water and tunneled through t
he thick glass, casting a sheer hoop of light on the opposite wall.
“I want to sleep,” Simone said, “but he won’t leave me alone.”
Feeling as though she were looking through the lens of an enormous telescope, Irene gazed out the porthole. In the distance, she saw the wink of a lighthouse, hovering at the rim of the night like a fallen star. She could feel Simone’s emotional fatigue, and she sought to relieve it. “Let’s not talk about him. Think about something else. Think about Cambodia. Tell me another story like the one about Touit.”
Simone sat down once again on the floor, her back against the wall. “What is there to tell? She cleaned our house and cooked our meals and took such good care of me. She even loved me. And how did my parents reward her? Her salary was less than the pocket money I was given for simply being their child. There are reasons a revolution is necessary, Irene. I didn’t believe in it solely because he told me to.” Her hands tightened into fists. “I don’t care what that newspaper says. It’s not true. I am not a victim. I knew what I was doing. I have always known what I am doing.”
“Who cares what a government sympathizer wrote about you? In the North-China Daily, of all tabloids.”
“I have never done anything I don’t believe is right. I will never do anything I don’t believe is right. You must understand that, Irene.”
“A story,” Irene whispered. “Tell me a story.”
“All right, yes, a story.” Simone sighed, heavily. “After I would finish with my tutor, Touit would pack a picnic for me, bundles of rice and chicken wrapped in banana leaves. I would carry it out to the temples, and the best part of my education would begin. Do you know of Monsieur Commaille?”
“I do.” Jean Commaille had been the first director of the Conservation d’Angkor, where statues and steles rescued from the temple were taken to be restored and studied. He was also credited with clearing the jungle away from Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. He had been killed during an anti-French peasant uprising in 1916.
